Mencyclopaedia: Brooks

Gold-standard British saddles and cycling-wear.

BY Luke Leitch |
10 August 2012

Sir Chris Hoy with his sixth Olympic gold Photo: AP

Thanks to Sir Chris Hoy and Team GB's golden squadron of velodrome heroes, Britain's bike shops expect a fresh wave of new cyclists to descend on them. Yet unless they fancy a Brompton fold-up or a retro Pashley roadster, these tyros in tight Lycra are unlikely to bag themselves a British bike.

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Because although the modern bicycle was invented here (the "Rover", in Coventry in 1885), our once pre-eminent bike-building industry has suffered a decline of Alpine-stage steepness. Once-mighty marques such as Elswick Hopper, Holdsworth, Hercules and Sun are long gone, and Raleigh - for years the world's biggest bike-maker - is now British only in name.

But whatever (most likely Taiwanese-made) bikes the Olympic-inspired opt for, they can nonetheless ensure that their bottoms enjoy entirely British support by buying a Brooks saddle.

Jacket, £850

Established in 1866 - when bikes were penny-farthings - by an entrepreneurial West Midlands (horse) saddler named John Boultbee Brooks, the company still produces all its saddles and most of its clothes and bags in England. Brooks's conversion from hoof to wheel began in 1877 when he borrowed a bicycle that, although speedy, was let down by its wooden seat. Sore, he set about improving it and by the 1880s had filed patents for a design not a million miles away from the company's contemporary riveted leather bike saddles.

Flyersaddle, £95

Unless you go for a particularly well-sprung model, the first few weeks on a Brooks can be a pain in the posterior. But once it is broken in, that pain produces a saddle moulded perfectly to fit and that will, with a little care, last for years and years.

By the Fifties, Brooks had grown alongside the British bike industry into the world's largest saddle supplier. Then, in 1962, it was bought by the mighty Raleigh - which meant that when the bike-building industry began to break down in the late Eighties, it could all-too-easily have disappeared, too.

But Brooks just about soldiered on until, in 2002, it was purchased again, this time by a successful Italian saddle company named Selle Royal. They have proved excellent owners, leaving the Smethwick factory to get on with producing its peerless saddles, but working hard to market them.

Now you can see Flyers, Swifts, B17s or ultra-comfortable B66s gleaming on top of seat stems in bicycle racks in every major bike-loving city in the world.

Brooks also makes some attractive, innovative bags and panniers and recently started producing clothes, too. The "John Boultbee" range of jackets is designed by Savile Row's Timothy Everest and includes the ultimate 21st‑century garment for cycle snobs, a tweed jacket named the Elder Street with reflective flashes, cycling-friendly seamed arms, and hidden toggles and pockets aplenty.

The most expensive, a great trail jacket-inspired design in Ventile called the Criterion, is, at £850, pricier than most new fully kitted, bells and whistles bikes - a fact about which there are plenty of shocked comments on the Brooks website.

Yet apparently it is selling well, too, as part of what appears to be a strategy by Selle Royal to turn Brooks into the Hermès of cycling.

That can be no bad thing - especially if that Smethwick production line keeps turning out world-beating, long-lasting leather saddles for £60 or so.